do a bit

Last week I was on a secret squirrel mission for Father's Day. I got my little man to make a card for Fathers Day, drawing with felt pens and some cutting and pasting paper on a card... very messy but lots of fun! I am really loved the abstract design and thought it would look fantastic on a T-shirt for his daddy!

:: Father's Day card by M

Wow what a little challenge I set myself!! I wanted it to look exactly like the card! It's quite a difficult one to do and 6 colours too! I was thinking "Am I totally insane???" "Yes" was the answer :)
I also had to hide it and keep it a secret from Chris/daddy... not an easy task when with a big piece of board with a partially screen printed t-shirt on it! I was praying that he would need to go looking for something under our bed!!

Anyway... once I had figured out the best way to do the screen print, I cut out the stencils for each colour!

:: cutting stencils for each colour

It was all pretty straight forward really, the only tricky bit was making sure everything lined up perfectly! A lot of masking tape got used to set up all the registration marks so the screens line up! With each colour I screen printed, I would check it against the card and make minor adjustments with a fine paint brush to make it look exactly like it, with the brush strokes and torn edges of the paper on the card.

:: 1st - aqua and blue :: 2nd - yellow
:: 3rd - red :: 4th - orange and dark blue

I am so happy with how it turn out and M's daddy just loved it :)

:: masterpiece on a t-shirt

Sometimes I think someone (the fun police) is going to tap me on the shoulder and say "Excuse me you are not allowed to do that anymore, YOU are having way to much fun!" :)

Hope you are having a great creative week!
There are loads more creative people over at our creative spaces...

My second last class :( We did life drawing this week... I really loved it! I have done a little bit of life drawing about 20 years ago and I don't remember a thing really! But I found that I got into the swing of things really quickly!

First we did loads of 1 minute basic line sketches to get our bearings.

:: 1 minute drawings - charcoal on A2 paper

Next - 3 minute drawings: We drew circles for each part of the body and then drew the body outline, if we had time. This was a really great technique to get the body proportions right... I need all the help I can get!

:: 3 minute drawings - charcoal on A2 paper

Next - 5 minute drawings: We drew circles in pencil this time and then drew the outline of the body in charcoal. *Please excuse the smudging over the top of the drawings which is caused by other drawings on the facing pages. I had to use both sides of the paper as I nearly ran out of paper!

:: 5 minute drawings - charcoal on A2 paper

The next set of 5 minute sketches: We used squares and triangle to sketch out the body and then drew the body outline over the top with charcoal.

:: 5 minute drawings - charcoal on A2 paper

Next - 10 min drawings: These were my favourite from the whole evening! At first I thought I liked using the circle technique as it is give a smoother finished outline. But after chatting to one of the ladies during our break, she was using squares and triangle... I decided to switch and try the squares and triangle again! I am so glad I did as I much prefer the slightly more angular look it gives to the drawing when you do the outline. So funny, the lady I was chatting to decided to switch to circles!
Some of the positions the model was sitting in were quite difficult to draw especially where she has her leg tucked under the other... I think I did really well :)

:: 10 minute drawings - pencil and charcoal on A2 paper

It was such a great class and I am so pleased with how my drawings turned out... such a huge improvement from the beginning of the class!!! I really do surprise myself sometimes :)

Next week...my last week :( and more life drawing... Yay!!!

my creative space: Father's Day screen print

drawing course: week 7